


climb this mountain

by akaparalian



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Love Letters, M/M, Meddling Friends, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2014-11-27
Packaged: 2018-02-27 04:22:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2678963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaparalian/pseuds/akaparalian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he was six and a half years old, Matt Duchene wrote one of his idols a love letter. </p><p>It all went downhill from there.</p><p>(Or, the one with the fanletter-slash-marriage proposal, a fair bit of pining, and Paul Stastny taking great enjoyment from other people's operatic star-crossed hockey romances.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	climb this mountain

**Author's Note:**

> The number of times I misspelled Gabe's name as "Gbae" during the course of writing this fic is simply atrocious. I actually cannot believe it. HE'S NOT EVEN RELEVANT FOR LIKE 75% OF THIS FIC. *shakes fist*
> 
> This would not be what it is without the amazing beta/cheerleader abilities of one [abstractconcept](http://archiveofourown.org/users/abstractconcept/pseuds/abstractconcept); I am greatly in her debt. <3 She made this super fun to write and pointed out the obvious solutions to all of my dilemmas and basically she kept the world turning on this thing, metaphorically speaking, so a big THANK YOU to her is in order... as well as to my FABULOUS WONDERFUL AMAZING better half for the purposes of this event, my artist/mixer, [ferrassie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ferrassie/pseuds/ferrassie), who made an absolutely GORGEOUS mix which can be found [here](http://8tracks.com/ferrassie/climb-this-mountain). 
> 
> Title from “When You Were Young” by the Killers.

When he was six and a half years old, Matt Duchene wrote one of his idols a love letter.

It all went downhill from there.

 

\---

It's actually all his mom's idea, at least at first.

She's trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to put him to bed after a game one night, the post-game stuff still playing on the TV in the living room, and he's absolutely bouncing off the walls with joy, because the Avs _won!_ They won, and it was amazing, and did she _see_ that save by Roy, and that goal of Sakic's in the second, wow, they're so _amazing_ , he wants to be _just like them_ someday -

He's still babbling a little bit and trying to pull his pajama shirt on over his head with one arm so that he can use the other to gesticulate, so he doesn't notice it, but almost as soon as he says that she gets this decidedly evil gleam in her eye.

"Why don't you tell them that?" she says, cutting him off in that special calm, innocent voice that seems to come with being the parent of a small child. Matt blinks owlishly back at her, pajamas still only half-on, and tilts his head curiously.

"How am I gonna do that?" he asks slowly, slightly suspiciously, trying to picture in his head a map of the distance between Ontario and Colorado and figure out exactly how he's going to manage to get across it.

His mother smiles and leans down to tug the shirt over his head fully, smoothing his hair down where it's been ruffled up around his ears by his scrabbling and tugging. "Write them a letter," she explains, and his eyes go wide all over again, because that's not just a good idea, it's a _great_ idea. So great, in fact, that he's going to do it right -

"In the morning," she adds firmly, shoving him gently towards the bed, and he sighs and harrumphs but he does go, at least, so she's won the battle at least until tomorrow night.

He lies awake for - well, it seems like eons to his six-year-old mind, but really it's probably only about half an hour. Still, it's half an hour spend feverishly considering what he'll say, and if maybe he should include illustrations to cement his point (he does not know it yet, but years in the future he will be profusely glad he decides against this option), and - perhaps mostly importantly - who, exactly, he will send his letter to.

There are a number of options, after all - the Avalanche aren't wanting for talent, he thinks as proudly as though he'd hand-picked them all himself. But then again, he's always had his favorite, ever since he was only four, which, of course, was _ages_ ago, a very long time to have a favorite anything. So in the end, the pivotal decision is a pretty easy choice: he'll send his letter to Patrick Roy, because Patrick Roy is his favorite. Simple.

The next morning, the second Saturday of the month, dawns sharp and crisp and eager. Or, at least, Matt wakes up eager, a bit puppyish and energetic but at the same time deathly serious about the task before him. He's uncharacteristically withdrawn over a breakfast of pancakes and bacon, eating silently and studiously and cutting his flapjacks neatly all by himself after dousing them in a childhood-appropriate amount of maple syrup, even though he knows he really shouldn't because sweets aren't good for him (his parents remind him of this regularly, and he takes it seriously - as seriously as he takes anything, being six, though perhaps not as seriously as he takes hockey - but then again, he's pretty sure it tastes too good to be _that_ bad).

His mother keeps glancing across the table at him and smothering a smile into her coffee, and his dad, busily going to town on his own plate of pancakes, thinks privately that this is a nice break from what would usually be endless chatter about the previous night's game, though he does wonder exactly what's going on to get Matt so thoughtful.

It gets a little clearer when Matt very carefully selects a sheet of lined paper and his best markers and sets them down on the table and starts to work furiously at writing…. something. Something, for that matter, that he refuses to let his parents read over his shoulder, or help him with, or so much as glance at (though it could certainly have used something of an adult touch when it came to some of the spelling and grammar, or lack thereof).

Later, he won't remember the exact words he used or the various and sundry ways they were earnestly, childishly misspelled, but he'll remember the gist of it, the feelings he poured out into the paper in his shaky, spidery handwriting. He'll remember sealing it all carefully up in an envelope and carefully putting on the stamp and finally asking for his parents' help in addressing it to _Patrick Roy, c/o Colorado Avalanche_ , and he'll remember walking down to the mailbox himself and proudly flipping up the little flag.

Most of all, he'll remember standing there and slowly closing the box and thinking to himself, precocious and determined, that putting this promise down on paper and sending it thousands of miles away to someone he's looked up to for most of his young life means it's really permanent, and he'll remember promising himself as much as - or even more then - his letter promises Patrick Roy that one day, he'll be c/o Colorado Avalanche, too.

 

\---

Of course, he grows up. Slowly - at least, it seems slow to him - but it does happen. And with years and age and maturity and an ever-growing and obvious talent for hockey comes the growing sense of sheepish embarrassment every time he looks back on writing that fucking letter.

He tries to convince himself, as he gets a bit older and a bit more cognizant of how mortifying it is to have written a letter to one of the greatest goalies of all time, one of his heroes, and essentially gushed childishly at him - as well as… some of the other things he said, the one thing in particular that he absolutely positively refuses to even let himself _think_ about.

Because here's the thing: that letter that he wrote was perhaps a little more than the regular-grade admiration that his mother had expected when she planted the idea in his head.

It's… entirely possible he might have made a couple of promises, only one of which he maintains any intent to follow through on. If - hypothetically, of course - this was not only possible, but in fact true, it might also be true that the first, the far less embarrassing of those promises, was that he would make it to the NHL himself someday, and, moreso, that he would play with Roy, for the Avs. That one he isn't at all ashamed of or sheepish about - that one he chants to himself under his breath and in his head almost every time he steps out on the ice. It was nothing new, either, when he wrote it down at six years old - he'd had that dream clutched tight to his chest since before he was old enough to even recognize it for what it was, since before he even knew how to skate properly. He thinks sometimes that he probably wanted to play hockey before he wanted to walk or crawl; he knows that's silly, and maybe a little pretentious, suggesting that the sport's what makes him who he is - he knows that's not entirely true, but it's close enough.

There was something else in that letter, though. It was the something else, more than it was the hockey promise, that kept him up that night and on several nights since - a something else that he'd come up with almost on the spot, putting into words something his tiny childish frame didn't even really know it contained yet. He loves hockey - he loves hockey more than he loves practically anything else - and Patrick Roy was tied up so tight in hockey in his mind that he could hardly tear the two apart,

And, six-year-old Matt had thought to himself in bed that night in a puerile epiphany, what was it that you did to the people you loved? Or, well, the person you loved - usually just one?

He may or may not have said that he would not only play with Patrick Roy, but also marry him. That _may_ have been painstakingly written down and packaged up and sent off in the mail.

As he gets older, of course, he gets more and more embarrassed every time he thinks about it. At first, he's not sure why he would have even _thought_ to do that. It had seemed to make sense at the time - the perfect declaration of truth and intent, though he might not have worded it that way at six years old. But one day, when he was just enough older - ten or so - he'd more or less instantaneously come to the realization that he had made a grave error in the contents of that stupid letter.

It takes a couple more years after that, even, to figure out exactly why it may have seemed like a good idea - or, rather, to figure it out for the second time. Because it wasn't like he didn’t understand what marriage actually was; he was young enough and naïve enough to put that in writing, but old enough to understand that there was a difference between how he loved hockey and how he loved his family and how maybe someday he'd love the person he wanted to marry. He'd known the difference between romantic love, the kind he figured he'd want to marry for, and… everything else.

It's just that, as puberty abruptly pointed out to him, he thinks Patrick Roy is pretty damn dreamy. And he probably has since he was a child. And that's probably why he thought that stupid letter was a good idea in the first place.

So maybe he spends his teenage years going a little mushy whenever he thinks about a certain player who, by the time he's 12, isn't even _playing_ anymore. Plenty of kids have celebrity crushes, it's not that weird, right? His just happens to be on a man who's got, like, a quarter of a century on him. He's not… ashamed of it, not really. Sometimes he thinks vaguely that he _should_ be, but, he reasons time and again when he starts to feel bothered by it, it's not like he's hurting anything by being thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old and into Patrick Roy. Hell, he's surprised _all_ players his age aren't a little bit into Patrick Roy; it seems hard not to find it attractive when someone's that good at what they do, that passionate about it.

Of course, beyond just the fact that he spends his adolescence crushing very distantly on one of his boyhood idols the way other kids his age crush on movie stars or pop musicians, there's the fact that Patrick is, well, decidedly male, and so is Matt. And that part, moreso than just the fact that it's _Patrick Roy_ he's going googly-eyed over and hanging posters of on his bedroom wall, he worries about sometimes. Okay, a lot of the time. Okay, always, at some level or another, when his mind's not occupied by something else and sometimes even when it is.

The thing is, it's not being gay that bothers him - partially because he's not. He firmly points that out to himself from an early stage in the worrying process, noting that he's always liked girls, too, or - everyone, really. He's never been as bothered by gender as he has by talent, and drive, and, sure, looks, too. Not that he would have been ashamed if he _were_ gay - he'd like to think that he's a forward-thinking Canadian kid, thanks, not some slavering bigot - it's just that as far as he can tell, there don't seem to be any gay hockey players.

And that, really, is what he worries about. Being - whatever it is he may be, as opposed to being gay, means that at the very least he can be selective with his partners in the future and still be able to play hockey. That future is what he's sure of: just like he wrote in that stupid letter, he's going to make it to the NHL someday, he knows that somewhere in his chest that he doesn't dare question. It's himself, in an odd sense, that he's not sure of. If he's going to play hockey - and he's _going_ to play hockey - then can he really be into dudes?

He worries about it less and less as he gets older, which, whenever he stops to think about it, is a bit surprising, because every year older is a year closer to probably becoming some breed of minor celebrity via professional sports. Maybe it's just maturity. Maybe it's the growing realization, sparked by the number of guy's he's played with over the years who are, openly or otherwise, less than straight - a number that seems to grow whenever he's not paying attention to it - that he can still play hockey just fine even if he does like dick. But whatever it is, he firmly reassigns that worry to silly teenage over-dramatization as the draft draws ever nearer.

He's over worrying about that, he tells himself. He can be queer and play hockey. No one even has to know. Not that it would be bad if they did know, necessarily, just - they'd probably never shut up about it, and he'd rather talk about putting the puck in the fucking net, thanks. If it's going to be a problem, he can keep it secret, the way he's becoming increasingly sure plenty of other guys must do, and exactly the same way he's been doing for his entire life.

And, he tells himself very quietly but very firmly amidst all the buzz and excitement not long after he's pulled burghundy and blue over his head under the bright lights of the Bell Centre, he's especially over worrying about Patrick Roy.

 

\---

Turns out it's a lot easier to not worry about Patrick Roy when he's not your fucking coach.

Matt hears the news as soon as any of the guys do, he guesses, and it's - a million things all at once. Confusion, at first, and then an acute relief. Of course, Sacco'd been axed almost a month before, but a great big question mark in the head coach's place still left a lot to stress about, after all.

After that, though, there's _excitement_ , sharp and bright - because this is everything he wanted as a kid, isn't it? He plays for the Avalanche, he's on Sakic's team, and now he's going to be on Roy's team, too. It's… pretty incredible, really, and he's not the only one who's freaking out about it a little bit. The team phone tree is absolutely _buzzing_ , texts coming and going in a massive group message they've all had going since before the season ended and to and from individuals and people are tweeting about it and it's all of a sudden like their season isn't over at all, and he _itches_ to be out on the ice immediately.

It's such a small change on paper, just swapping out one name for another, but of course it's much more than that, and it _feels_ like much more than that. It feels positively monumental, the release of knowing he'll no longer be leashed to Joe Sacco coupled with this sudden extra push from a new interpretation of a dream he's had as long as he can remember to create a heady charge that carries him through the sleepy-hot beginnings of summer.

Maybe that's why it takes him as long as it does to realize that he's actually completely fucked. Not as fucked as he'd been under Sacco, maybe - that remains to be seen, he supposes - and fucked for a _completely_ different reason, but. He has a feeling that a little bit of worry when one of the people you'd had a hormonal, adolescent crush on becomes your boss is both natural and logical.

The thing is, though, right from the start it seems like none of that worrying was necessary after all.

Maybe, he thinks absently as he slowly gets redressed in his stall after the first day of training camp, he should have just been excited all summer and ridden that high he'd almost begun to think he'd never really get again after the way their last couple of seasons had been going. But this… this feels immediately different. Not as different as it might need to be, not yet, and not so different that it seems like anyone's forgotten that they finished up last year at the bottom of the barrel, but Patrick Roy had stood in front of them a few hours ago and told them slowly and firmly, like this was the most important thing he could possibly be saying to them at that moment in time, that he was their partner. And the thing is, maybe it _was_ the most important thing, because the whole team seemed to catch his energy within the first few minutes out on the ice, just a little bit, and things are already not at all what they'd been just a few months ago.

So it's not as weird as he'd thought it would be, not from his end and certainly not from the team as a whole. Or - maybe it's more accurate to say that it's weird in a completely different _way_ than he'd thought it would be. There's a lot less reminiscing about his childhood fantasies and a lot more building new ones, ones where maybe instead of spiraling slowly downwards the Avs manage to pick themselves back up a little bit. There's a lot of room for that, even just in these very first few days of skating together before the season starts; there's something in the air that he hasn't felt in, God, years. Excitement, yeah, for sure, and more of that than they'd had last year, and relief, a little bit, when things seem to be slotting into place with a new coach and a young team and all the other question marks hanging over their heads, but also - hope? He feels stupid putting that word to a nameless feeling in his head, even though he swears he can feel it physically humming over the ice, but that's all he can come up with.

Well. If the shoe fits, he decides, standing up and slinging his bag over his shoulder, he's damn well going to wear it.

 

\---

And then one morning less than a week later, he wakes up to birds chirping sweetly, the sun shining warm through his bedroom window, and Twitter alerts and laughing texts from his teammates asking him about being a Patrick Roy fanboy.

It takes him a minute or so of fumbling through his phone and rubbing the sleep from his eyes to figure out what, exactly, everyone's talking about. He's pre-coffee, and it's still pretty early, but it doesn't take him _that_ long to figure out what all the fuss is about.

It's a video. He realizes this when he follows the Twitter trail back to a tweet the official Avs account sent out earlier this morning, with a link to a video on the team's website entitled simply "Meet Coach Roy". Matt has… a really bad feeling about this, actually, considering that people definitely seemed to think it was hilarious. Hilarity at his expense is never a good sign.

So, of course, he presses play.

It starts out innocently enough; it's just Patrick, looking stiff and a little uncomfortable in a gunmetal-gray suit and a burgundy tie. He's chatting with the interviewer, who Matt vaguely recognizes from various PR things over the years, talking about how great it is to be back in Colorado, how much he's missed Denver, spitting out all the same lines he's been throwing at the press since it was first announced that he was going to be coming back here, and Matt shifts to sit up straighter in his bed, the feeling of foreboding only growing as Patrick continues to talk.

Then the interviewer asks him what he thinks of the team, and for the first time he smiles in a way that looks genuine, his eyes lighting up. "It's a great group of guys," he says, accent seeming thicker through the tinny speakers of Matt's phone. "I think we've got a chance to really do something great this year."

"Are there any players in particular who are really standing out to you?" the interviewer asks, and Matt feels his stomach drop a little. This, he thinks resignedly, this is probably it.

He's right: "Well, there's a lot of potential overall," Patrick says, and that's fine, that's good, generic coach talk. "I don't pick favorites, but, if I did," he smiles cheekily, and the interviewer laughs, "Nathan MacKinnon is looking good, ready for the big stage, you know. Ah, and Varlamov, always good to see someone tough like that, in the crease. And Matty Duchene," he continues, and Matt groans aloud in the silence of his bedroom, because, fuck, here it comes, whatever _it_ is.

"He wasn't at his full potential before, there was some tension there, I think," Patrick continues, and that's innocent enough, besides being true. Except then he keeps talking and _fucking ruins it_.

"He sent me fan mail once, you know," he adds, off-hand, and the interviewer makes this gleeful little noise that signifies, Matt decides sourly, nothing so much as pure fucking _evil_.

"What did he say?" the guy asks, not even bothering to hide his delight (asshole, Matt thinks bitterly, halfheartedly vowing revenge if he ever sees the guy around at a photoshoot or something), and Patrick grins again, sharp and real.

"He was very young," he says, "it must have been - '97? '98? So he was in grade school. He said he admire me very much, and that one day he was gonna come to the NHL and play with me."

Matt is so busy dying of embarrassment, trying to decide whether or not he should stay in his bedroom forever and never be seen again, and contemplating murder all at once that he barely hears it when the interviewer says "I guess that worked out for him, didn't it?", or when Patrick replies "Sure it did," with another laugh. It's only when they move on, transitioning the conversation to a discussion of Patrick's favorite memories from that era ("Well, obviously winning the Cup was nice"), that Matt realizes Patrick hasn't brought up the _other_ things Matt had said in that letter.

Like, for instance, when he had _proposed marriage_ in all of his not-quite-seven-year-old glory.

He pretty much wants to roll over and die just thinking about it. But the fact that Patrick didn't mention it could mean a lot of things. He'd like to believe it means that Patrick's simply forgotten - he didn't keep that letter, surely, hasn't exactly been rereading it often enough to recall the whole thing. Or maybe Matt's handwriting at the tender age of six and a half had been just illegible enough that he'd gotten the gist, but missed the embarrassing part.

Or, he thinks with some trepidation, he remembers - that's the funniest, most precocious, most _memorable_ part of the whole letter, after all - and he just isn't enough of an asshole to kind of-sort of out Matt to the press, even in the context of early childhood idolatry.

Which is, actually, probably the most likely answer, because if he remembered the letter at all it was likely because of that bit - it was objectively hilarious, much as he fucking detests it at this moment. Meaning when Matt finally musters the will to get up out of this bed and head to skate, he's going to have to face not only a bunch of teammates who now know even more that they did before about his embarrassing hero-worship phase, but also a coach who he now knows remembers the time Matt proposed to him via fanletter.

Meaning that he also knows in a way that Matt's, well, not exactly straight as a ruler. He's not actually too worried about that, though; maybe it's stupid (it's definitely stupid), but he already trusts Patrick not to be an asshole about this or, really, about anything. After all, he'd had a perfect opportunity in this video to bring it up if he'd wanted to, and he hadn't said a word. Besides, Matt had been six at the time. If things _do_ go to shit, he reasons, he can write it off as childhood failure to understand that marriage implies romance or something if he absolutely has to. It'd make him feel kind of sick to his stomach, but he could do it.

The video finally ends, and Matt tosses his phone down on the covers and slumps back down from where he'd been leaning up against the headboard. Distantly, he wonders if he could somehow make himself just melt into his blankets until there was no way he could possibly leave the house and go to skate. He lets himself revel in the mopiness of that thought for exactly ten seconds before he slowly gets out of bed and shuffles downstairs to get started on something to eat in the hope that some combination of food, sitting on the couch and scratching Paisley behind the ears for a good solid few minutes the way they always do in the mornings, because dogs and hockey players are both creatures of habit, and maybe some reality TV will be able to convince him that he's _not_ about to get laughed at by his entire team for the duration of practice.

 

\---

Skate is weird. Really, really weird.

As predicted, everyone laughs their _asses_ off at him from the minute he walks into the room. It's all good-natured, of course, the way he knew it would be, but there is still no universe in which Ryan and Pauly and Ginner all individually coming up to him and giving him these almost identical simpering looks and asking when the wedding is (which, of course, is _way_ too close to home, not that they know that) and if he still has posters up above his bed at home, or if that's just at his parents' house, could possibly _not_ be embarrassing.

Everyone gets in on it, more or less, even the rookies - MacKinnon is already slotting into place within the team, carving out a niche, enough that sometimes it's almost possible to forget he looks a bit like an enthusiastic puppy with limbs and paws far too large for its body and feel like he's been here for years.

They're all still laughing when they step out onto the ice, swooping around him as he playfully shoves back at them and tells them where they can shove their shitty chirps, the good humor spilling out of the locker room and into the crisp air of the rink seamlessly. It's funny, actually - the longer they tease and joke, the less he's actually worried about it, settling back into the familiarity of _team_ and camaraderie, reminded all at once that even if this shit is a problem, it's also objectively kind of hilarious.

That lasts, of course, until the exact moment Patrick calls them together at center ice. His voice - "Come on, let's go, joke later", with, oh God, a twinkle in his eye that suggests that he's going to get in on the joke himself - makes the bottom drop out of Matt's stomach, but not as much as skating over and standing a few feet away from him and having to pretend like he can concentrate on much of anything beyond the whirring distress in his thoughts.

Obviously that's not _actually_ true - he's a professional, he can concentrate long enough to get through practice, for God's sake - but it sure feels like it, and every time he's got a spare second to think he catches himself glancing across the ice at Patrick running drills, Patrick with a little whiteboard outlining plays, Patrick making critiques and explaining them with these short, precise hand motions and the same steady, focused voice he always uses. It's ridiculous, is what it is, but he just can't keep himself from looking. He can make himself look away, but he's too caught up to keep himself from looking in the first place, and he really, really hopes that when the edge fades off the tension in his mind over this thing that the looking will go away, too.

Once or twice, he catches Patrick looking back. Never for long, certainly not once Matt meets his gaze, but there's something - contemplative about it, something considering that sends a guilty involuntary shiver up his spine. This is - oh _God_ \- everything he was worried about back in May when they first announced that Patrick was going to be coaching, Jesus. He spends all of his time between drills with a million things racing through the undercurrent of his mind, all of them centered around Patrick Roy, and he just. He decides right there on the ice as practice is drawing to a close that he has got to do something about this.

Then again, he has no idea _what_ to do about it.

Luckily, there's a precedent for that, so he does what he always does when he has no idea what the hell he's supposed to do: he practically races off the ice and through the showers and getting back into his clothes until he's able to catch Pauly sitting in his stall with his shirt half-on and try to look innocent.

Of course, that does approximately jack shit on someone who knows him as well as Pauly does. He gets one enormously unimpressed look for his trouble, before Pauly finishes pulling his shirt over his head and crosses his arms. "Your place or mine?" he asks drily, and Matt's pretty pleased with the fact that his laughter only sounds a tiny bit frenetic.

"Yours?" he answers, half-questioning, and Pauly nods and claps him on the shoulder.

"Sounds like a plan," he says affably, and Matt gives him a tense-but-relieved smile before turning away to dawdle his way down to the parking lot.

He still gets there before Pauly does, and he ends up lounging around waiting for twenty minutes or so, trying to look calm and relaxed and not at all neurotic just in case someone happens to walk by and see him. He's immersed himself in a game of Candy Crush by the time Paul gets there, but apparently that doesn't do much for his appearance of normality, because Pauly shoots him this long-suffering look of amusement as he unlocks the door, watching as Matt hastily pauses his game and scrambles to his feet.

"So," Pauly calls over his shoulder as he heads straight for the kitchen, Matt trailing along behind. "What is it this time?"

"Cutting right to the chase, huh," Matt grumbles to himself, but raises his voice to reply as he flops down on the couch in the next room. "Pretty sure you know, you seemed happy enough to joke about it." Maybe that sounds a little bitter. Maybe he _is_ a little bitter. Whatever, he's probably got a right to be a little bitter for a few minutes here.

"Yeah," Pauly says, appearing in the doorway with two bottles of beer and some indiscernible vaguely bar-shaped thing in a shiny wrapper that he probably intends to eat, "but you wouldn't be this bent out of shape about a little chirping, Dutchy, come on." He manages to sit down, take a sip, and shoot Matt a reproachful look all in one smooth motion, which, frankly, is pretty impressive.

"But it's _Patrick Roy_ ," Matt - doesn't _whine_ , he's not _whining_ , but maybe he says it in a very, very slightly whiney tone of voice. "Which means it's, uh. A little bit true. I mean, I really did write him that letter, and everything."

Pauly snorts. "When you were _six_ ," he points out - fairly reasonably, really. "Trust me, Matty, it's okay. We all had those sort of idols. Probably wouldn't be doing what we do now if we hadn't."

"But it's different," Matt says, shakes his head a little uncertainly. Pauly just raises an eyebrow at him, clearly daring him to go on. He heaves a sigh, feeling a little blush come up high on his cheekbones, because - well. It's dumb, but he was kind of hoping he wouldn't have to actually _say it out loud_. But, whatever, no time like the present.

"Just. It probably doesn't help that I've been ass-over-teakettle for him since, you know, forever," he mutters almost rebelliously, only to jump in shock when Pauly does - an honest-to-God _spit take_ , how (why) is this his life.

"Come again?" Pauly manages when he's mostly caught his breath, after Matt's thumped him on the back a few times, and all Matt can do is blink at him in confusion and scowl a little.

"I thought I was being pretty fucking obvious about it, actually," he says kind of blankly, still a little worried about the uncomfortable fuchsia color Paul's face had turned for a second there. "Like. Embarrassingly so."

Pauly thinks about that for a second, takes a much calmer, considering sip of his beer, and half-nods, half-shrugs. "Well," he admits, "you were kind of - starry-eyed, for a while there at first. But I think, I mean, I think we all thought it was just some kind of hero-worship, not. You know. A big gay love affair."  
Matt considers hitting him for that, but lets it slide. "Pretty sure that's what he thinks, too, then," he sighs, taking a swig of his own drink. "So, you know. There's a bit of luck, at least."

Pauly makes a thinking noise. "I dunno," he says slowly, and Matt has this brief, hysterical urge to scream, because Matt may be decent at people when compared to, like, Sidney effing Crosby or someone, but Pauly's actually kind of _good_ at this stuff, even by normal, non-hockey-player standards. It's kind of partly why Matt had picked him to come listen to him bitch and moan instead of anyone else, and it also means that his observations about this shit are often correct, previous assumption that Matt wasn't totally into their coach notwithstanding, and it sure sounds like he's about to _observe_ something Matt's not all that sure he really wants to hear.

Sure enough, the next words out of his mouth are, "The guy's kinda weird about you, too, Dutch," and Matt's torn between being softly grateful that Pauly's not even just accepting, but more or less trying to encourage him, and wanting to bury his head in the little throw pillows on the other end of the couch and not listen to another word, because seriously, _not helping him get over jack shit, Stast._ And - he wants to get over this. He _does_. Anything else would be stupid. Really stupid. Even stupider than falling so damn hard in the first place.

Except that when Stats thoughtfully says, "He kind of stands near you a lot? And he _did_ make a point to mention you in that video, even before he brought up the stupid letter," he can feel his heart thumping a little harder. Which, he reminds himself just this side of viciously, is exactly the opposite of the preferred response.

"I don't know," he replies dubiously, trying desperately to hold on to at least the façade of someone who's Not Going To Pursue This At All. “He, I mean – come on, even if he, you know –“ He waves one hand distractedly. “I mean, there’s no way, right? He’d lose his job, and I’d probably lose mine,” he points out, and Pauly shrugs with one shoulder.  
"Whatever, Dutch, it's your thing," he says around the mouth of his beer bottle. "I just - I don't know, I don't think you should dismiss it out of hand. It might make you happy. And you sort of need some extra happy in your life, I think."

Matt's not really sure he should take that as a compliment, but he can't help it; he know Stats has his best interests at heart, or whatever. He means well. He just may not actually be helping.

"Thanks," he says kind of softly, knocks their shoulders together, and Paul grins back at him.

"Don't mention it," he says, before reaching for the TV remote like nothing ever happened at all.

 

\---

After that, Matt's paying attention.

Not that he wasn't paying attention before - or, well, actually he wasn't. He was paying attention to the things he knew where there, the things he knew mattered, hockey being the most obvious and central example. But maybe he's paying attention to more now, watching from a distance the way Patrick talks to the other guys and then trying to pretend he's not paying a lot of particular attention to the way Patrick talks to him.

For example, he knows that Patrick hasn't pulled anyone else aside and looked them steadily in the eye and said, sure and confidential, "You want to go to the Olympics," no questioning inflection because he knows it's not a question, and then clapped them on the shoulder and walked them into his office while he spun out in front of them exactly how that will happen. He knows Patrick _does_ stay after with the guys, sometimes, alone or in groups, if they want to work through something, but there's that and then there's what they're doing, spending nearly twice as much time at the rink as they might have otherwise on some days, not quite being sure how to say _thank you_ for this even though he's never since the day he was drafted wanted to thank someone this much. But they don’t talk about it.

Actually, it's less that they don't talk about it and more that they Don't Talk About It, neither of them quite managing to bring up the fact that this is a little out of the ordinary. And that goes on for over a _month_ , something Matt thinks of despairingly more often than he'd like to.

The start of the regular season comes and goes, the Pepsi Center humming with energy and noise and, increasingly, genuine excitement and the belief that this year isn't going to be anything like the last, and they Don't Talk About It. They practically spend more time together, or at least together and with the rest of the team, than they do apart, and they Don’t Talk About It. Patrick has him over for fucking _Thanksgiving dinner_ \- granted, he invites all the other Canadians on the team and they make a big deal of it, being sure to point out to their more southern counterparts that they're not invited, and they'll have to wait over a month to have _their_ fattening holiday - and even then they Don't Talk About It, they just pass one another the mashed potatoes and pretend there isn't something weird crackling in the air.

That's actually one of the most deeply strange team get-togethers he's ever been to. Everyone's a bit on the exhausted side, just back from a road trip that had finished up with a game the day before in Washington, and there's a definite awareness running underneath everything that this is so far to left field compared to last year. Patrick Roy's Avs, in this as in everything else, apparently, are very different than Joe Sacco's Avs. Matt's grateful for that, at least, even if he's a little less enthusiastic about awkwardly glancing at Patrick over his dining table every few minutes and wondering the same nervous things he's been worrying for the past month or so.

Of course - as Pauly's only too fond of telling him - he could avoid further awkward glancing if he were to just nut up and start the conversation himself instead of just sitting around waiting for something to happen, but like. There's human interaction, and then there's just insanity.

Not that he doesn't try. Sort of. He practices on Paisley, at least - though he's not such a good stand in for Patrick, considering he's a little more interested in licking Matt's face and rolling over in the interest of getting his belly scratched than holding a conversation. Also, Matt's not sure if practicing on his dog is a step up or a step down from practicing in the mirror, but he figures it's still at least a little better than not even trying at all, and a good deal worse than not having the conversation with actual Patrick Roy, so.

October proceeds apace and Denver ripens to its peak, the last full bloom of the autumn foliage holding on until the month's almost out, which is something. There's already snow on the ground, but it's not too bad, just a light dusting here and there that more often than not melts off by the afternoon. It makes the leaves on the ground smell all musty, though, but Matt doesn't mind that all that much. It's kind of nice, really; the city's beautiful like this, with the nip of winter in the air but not fully realized yet, and he's enjoying getting in the last of his running time outside without having to worry too much about winter weather, instead of staying inside on the treadmill. It's more or less the only working out he can easily do outside, and he doesn't exactly have the time to take a day off and go out fishing to enjoy the last of autumn, so he makes the most of it.

They play Carolina a couple weeks after the Thanksgiving thing at Patrick's house, and it's. It's a good game, a _great_ game for Matt - two goals and an assist, and he's just indescribable, practically vibrating with it. Everything seems really bright as time winds down at the end of the third, and Pauly leans over on the bench to very seriously and says, "Your eyes are sparkling, Matty. Might wanna tone that down."

He doesn't crack a grin until Matt's stared at him dead-eyed for a good little while, but when he does break he knocks their shoulders together companionably, so clearly he's not _that_ jealous of Matt's incredible game and impressive skill and _totally normal, nonsparkling eyes_.

The buzzer sounds less than a minute later and there's noise everywhere, including directly in Matt's ear where like three people have converged to pin him to the bench from all sides, everyone sort of crashing into one another and shouting hoarsely. Everyone includes Matt too, of course, and he's so happy he barely even remembers to feel awkward about it when in the middle of everything he catches Patrick's eye and they exchange beaming smiles before Matt's attention is pulled back into the crush of one-armed hugs and excited yelling, because this win makes them _first in the league_ , and that's - unbelievable, after last year.

The locker room's a bit of a zoo afterwards - a bit more of a zoo than it usually is after a win, anyway. Matt gets perhaps more than his fair share of the press' attention, but no one seems to mind; he does his best to direct the attention to everyone else instead, because _he_ didn't put the team at the top of the freakin' charts, they all did - though he's still not used to being at the top of the charts at all, or even _near_ the top of the charts. It still sort of feels like a dream, and he finds himself wondering a little if that feeling ever really goes away.

(He doesn't know it yet, but Patrick will tell _his_ press that he thought Matt was outstanding tonight. "He had his legs and he was skating well and when he does that, I mean, he's definitely really dangerous. I guess I start to repeat myself, but he's been consistent. He's one of our best players right now, I have no doubt about it," he says, his voice steady and sure, and when Matt sees the clip online later it'll make his stomach clench in a way he can't classify yet. But he's got a while yet before he has to worry about that.)

By the time the last reporter says, "Thanks for your time," most of the rest of the guys are already gathered around Patrick near the doorway, buzzing excitedly. Matt's just walking up to join them when Patrick waves his hands for silence and smiles crookedly.

"Excellent job, all of you," he says, and it's not the first time he's said that or something similar - it's not even the first time tonight - but it hums under Matt's skin anyway.

"Tonight, we're in a great place," Patrick continues, the excited yammering that had started to build back up again dying down as quickly as it had come. "So I think tonight we can celebrate, don’t you?"

The resounding cheer pretty much answers that question. And so that's how Matt ends up at Patrick Roy's house, drunk off his ass (or drunker than he usually gets, anyway) and making questionably poor decisions.

Things go fine when the other guys are there. Pretty much everyone heads straight to Patrick's from there, a few guys clearly stopping to make liquor runs on their way over, and it's controlled madness that hits Matt full-on from the second he walks in the door. This isn't really a team that goes out and parties a lot, usually, though he supposes that could have more to do with losing more often than not in the past than anything else, but at any rate this is the first time he's seen some of these guys drunk at all and most of them _this_ drunk, so it's pretty hilarious.

Landy, for example, is a really friendly drunk, and he attaches himself bodily to Matt in Patrick's well-furnished living room for like half an hour at one point. He also talks really animatedly with his hands, which means he tends to slosh stuff around a bit, and by the fifth time in the rambling story he's telling Matt about, apparently, almost getting eaten by bears or wolves or _something_ predatory in the Swedish wilderness that he's come extraordinarily close to spilling his drink all over himself, Matt's a bit tempted to find him a cup with a lid. A travel mug, maybe? He doubts Patrick has any kids' sippy cups lying around, though that would be hilarious.

"So we ran away," Gabe's saying with some finality, and Matt waits expectantly for him to finish the story before he realizes that's exactly what just happened.  
"That's it?" he asks, a bit confused, and Gabe laughs cheerfully in his face and leans in to wrap an arm as far around Matt's shoulder as he can.

"'Course not!" he says agreeably, claps Matt on the arm, and then promptly wanders off, yelling after someone whose name Matt can't make out as he goes.

Matt shakes his head slightly. He's pretty sure Gabe hasn't even had _that_ much to drink, so apparently those stereotypes about Scandinavians and high alcohol tolerance are bullshit after all. Or maybe that was Russians? Whatever.

He wanders around a bit after that; this is pretty much the biggest party he's been to in a couple years - though it's still pretty tame in the long run, he supposes, mostly just guys standing around chatting and goofing off a bit and, yeah, imbibing copious amounts of alcohol, but at least no one's trying to do keg stands or shit, this isn't a frat party by any means - and he's having almost as fun watching the guys get smashed as he is actually celebrating the win. Pretty much no one looks sober, so he's guessing there'll be a lot of taxis showing up sooner or later. Someone's put on - Jesus, Started From the Bottom, never let it be said this isn't a team of comedians, and the bass is thumping through the baseboards under his feet. He takes one last look around the room and decides, what the hell. He doesn't even _want_ to beat them, so he might as well join them.

Patrick, as it turns out, has really good taste in liquor, because there's some very nice bourbon out on the counter, and Matt doesn't even feel too bad about monopolizing… well… a decent portion of it. He may or may not just steal the bottle and take it with him, but it's not like it was full when he found it, he's not drinking the _whole_ thing, God. Whatever, at least he also takes a glass; he's got standards, here.

After that things get a little blurrier, and then things get a _lot_ blurrier. And then before he knows it, he's being - shaken awake, apparently, and Patrick's standing over him and smiling a little bit, and the room is suspiciously empty.

He manages a wordless noise of confusion and Patrick laughs, soft and low. "You fell asleep on the couch," he explains. "Thought it was best to just let you be, but you slept through everyone leaving."

Well, _that's_ fucking embarrassing. "What time's it?" he mumbles, sitting up as quickly as possible in this state and regretting it very quickly when there's a queasy lurch in his stomach.

"Late," is all Patrick says. "I made up the guest bed. Come on, you need water and something that isn't the couch to sleep on, eh?"

He finds he can't quite argue with that.

Maybe it should be weird, following Patrick Roy through his quiet, empty house, taking a detour in the kitchen to get a glass of water (and then in the hall bathroom for a refill, because Matt's already finished off the first one) and then heading for a small but functional spare room wrapped up in warm, comfortable, stable colors, but - it isn't. That's actually the weird part. They're standing there together, Matt's fiddling awkwardly with the hem of his shirt and setting his second glass of water down on the bedside table, and none of it even feels that weird. Feels like it _should_ feel weird, maybe, but -

"I'm sorry about that," Patrick says suddenly, gesturing with one hand as if he's searching for the words. "Thing, you know. With that letter. I did not mean to embarrass you."

It takes Matt way longer than it should to process that, because he's still. Well. He's still more than a little tipsy. But he gets there soon enough, and sucks in a breath quietly through his teeth, trying to figure out how to respond to that, trying to figure out if he even _can_.

"No, it's okay. It… means a lot to me," he finds himself saying slowly, carefully, keeping his voice as even as he knows how, "that you still remember it after all this time."

Patrick smiles, warm and a little crinkly around the edges, and Matt does a pretty good job of pretending that doesn't get to him at all. Pretty good. Mostly. Except then - "Well, I remember it because I keep it," Patrick explains, and that would be - okay, or at least okay-ish, but then he continues, jokingly, "I had to keep it, to make sure you keep your promise."

He's always kind of thought "his blood ran cold" was a stupid expression, maybe because he spends too much time feeling warm and alive while everything around him is cold, maybe because he's never really associated cold with _bad_ things, but his blood seriously fucking runs cold. It's actually, embarrassingly enough, a few seconds before he can speak, and he has to kind of clear his throat just slightly to do so. "What - uh, what do you mean?" he asks, just the slightest hint of a terrified croak to his voice. "What promise?"

It's his last, desperate hope, the last shred of denial and blind faith that maybe, somehow, this isn't about to get fucked in exactly the way he thinks it's going to get fucked.

"Well," Patrick says, and - he's still joking, still smiling, but something's a little different now, a little off. "I guess you forget, it was a long time ago, but you said when you got to the NHL you were gonna play with me, and then you were gonna marry me."

That's it, then, Matt thinks, somehow dazed. There goes the last shred of his prayers to keep this shit from happening at all.

"I was hoping you'd forgotten about that part," he admits quietly, twisting his fingers tightly into the fabric of his shirt, and the way Patrick jerks, just a little bit, at that - it's confusing as fuck, but in a weird way it's also a little comforting, a tiny reminder that it's the both of them that are slightly out of their depth with this conversation.

"That was my favorite part," Patrick says, slowly, carefully, and now it's _Matt's_ turn, apparently, to react physically because he can't not, clenching his hands automatically into fists and taking a sharp breath that's far more obvious than he would have liked. "How could I forget?"

"Why?" he asks, kind of dazed, kind of awed, kind of sure that whenever he gets around to telling Stats about this over quite possibly the hardest alcohol he can get his hands on, 'cause he's gonna need it when he gets through here, that asshole's going to laugh himself sick over this.

Patrick tilts his head consideringly, rubbing at his chin with one hand. "I guess I… liked to think that by the time you're old enough to play, you _could_ marry a boy. Someone your own age, maybe," he adds with a chuckle, and something in Matt's on fire, delighted warmth and a cruel burn all at once when he says that, "but it would be okay."

Matt is - utterly fucking speechless, really. And he feels… he doesn't know why, it makes no sense, but he feels. Brave. Drunk, though maybe not as drunk as he had been earlier. So he says, because it seems suddenly like it's the only thing he _can_ say, "But what if I still don't want someone else?"

He's not totally sure that made sense, but he thinks Patrick got the point, because he blinks and jerks back just slightly, surprised. "Matty?" he says, hesitantly, like he's asking for clarification, and God, Matt can feel the blush high up on his cheekbones with every fiber of his entire being.

"Sorry," he mutters, "I just…" He's not sure how to finish that sentence, not sure if he can take back all that he's said. Not sure if he wants to. This was just supposed to be a casual party to celebrate their win, holy _shit_ , what's going _on_.

"You cannot be serious," Patrick says quietly, and the words make him to curl up in a ball and scream, sort of, but there's something in his _tone_ that almost makes his heart stop beating.

"Holy shit, Pauly was _right_ ," he breathes, almost silent, and watches his own hands shaking minutely for a moment before he looks back up, not sure he can look Patrick in the face right now but all of a sudden _needing_ to. "Really?" he asks, raw, and he knows that even in leaving so much implied and inferred but unsaid they've understood each other perfectly because Patrick goes utterly still.

"I could ask you that same thing," he says, almost cross, and Matt kind of wants to laugh.

"Yeah, well," he says, suddenly feeling no more sober than he had when he'd polished off what was left of that bottle of bourbon. His flesh feels like it's bubbling beneath his skin in the best possible way, and there's a flush in Patrick's cheeks, and Matt - doesn't know how to handle this. Nothing's happened, he reminds himself firmly. Nothing's _really_ happened.

He shifts just slightly in Patrick's direction, the few feet of soft carpet and the corner of the spare bed between them seeming suddenly like too much. Patrick hesitates for a moment, looks like he really, really wants to move away, but stays put, and Matt takes a solid step forward, emboldened.

He still has no idea what to say, though, so they just stand there, studying one another steadily. It's Patrick who breaks the silence just before it can stretch long enough to get awkward, and Matt only barely keeps himself from taking in a big gasp of air like he feels like he has to to fill up the heavy space the pause left in his lungs.

"I should go," Patrick says quietly, almost silently, and Matt forces himself to nod.

"Good night," he answers softly, though he wants to scream and ask what just happened and say whatever he has to say to figure out whether Patrick's freaking out about it as much as he is, and just better at hiding it. He doesn't do any of that, though, just stands there worrying his shirt and watching Patrick turn and leave and shut the door gently behind him.

There's a creaking above him as Patrick heads upstairs to where his bedroom must be, and Matt stands stock-still in the sudden emptiness for almost five minutes, mind whirring frantically, before he can manage to so much as climb into bed or drink the rest of his water or reach over to turn the lamp off, and certainly before he can manage to do all three.

He doesn't sleep very well that night.

 

\---

He keeps it together during skate the next day remarkably well for someone who can't seem to keep himself from staring at Patrick every time his back is turned or his attention seems to be on something else. Then again, he practically speedwalks across the locker room as soon as he deems it a passably normal time to do so and not-quite begs Stast to come over under the guise of having dinner and a few beers together, and the expression on Paul's face says pretty clearly that he sees right through that one and knows full well that he's in for more of talking about Matt's… situation, so maybe he wasn't doing as great a job as he thought he was.

Leaving Patrick's house that morning had been incredibly awkward; he's not really sure how either of them managed any semblance of normal interaction after the almost surreal happenings of the wee hours, but they did, at least long enough for Matt to borrow a toothbrush, beg off the offer of breakfast and a cup of coffee, apologize profusely for being a bother, decidedly not mention anything pertaining to that damn letter, their conversation, or certainly anything that could be construed as a reference to his emotions, and then get in his car and drive away. It was a way more uncomfortable morning after than it should have been, he thinks sourly, considering that all they did was _talk_. He's felt way less uncomfortable leaving after _actually having sex_ , for God's sake.

He does actually cook for Pauly, of course, and it turns out pretty awesome - chicken with squash and sweet potato fries, and they settle at the little oak table in the breakfast nook and crack open a couple of beers and eat quietly for a little while, maintaining the illusion that they're not about to talk about capital-f Feelings.

Pauly, actually, is the first to crack. "So," he says slowly when they've both mostly finished eating. "What happened last night? Because it's pretty obvious _something_ happened last night."

Matt really hates that he can feel himself blushing. "Nothing _really_ happened!" he protests quickly, realizing a half a second too late that that sounds like a great case of 'methinks the lady doth protest too much', confirmed by the way Pauly's eyebrows shoot up disbelievingly. "Really," Matt insists, setting down his last forkful of chicken to cross his arms on the table. "We just talked, is all."

"That's not nothing," Pauly points out, slowly taking a sip of beer. "So what did you talk about, then?"

The wordless noise Matt makes must be answer enough, because he cackles gleefully. "You talked about _emotions_? God, that's great. What I wouldn't give to watch you two try to tell each other about how you _feel_. Did you resort to hockey metaphors?"

Matt takes offense to that statement, actually. "Of course not," he scoffs. "It was fine. I mean - embarrassing as hell, but fine." He shrugs, feels himself blushing again, scratches at his neck absently. "Actually, maybe more than fine? I mean, he was pretty… um." He hesitates, not sure how to say 'he likes me back' without sounding really, really adolescent, or, alternately, like a pretentious douche.

Thankfully, Pauly continues to be an expert at reading between the lines. "So - what, he said he feels the same?" he asks, clearly delighted; Matt has a sudden, sinking suspicion that this whole thing has basically turned into the equivalent of daytime soaps for him.

He heaves a sigh. "Yeah," he says slowly. "Well. Kind of. Mostly? I don't know, we didn't really - uh, we didn't really say anything in so many words."

Pauly goes from looking delighted to incredibly unimpressed in a few milliseconds. "So what you're saying is, you talked about your feelings, except you didn't actually talk about your feelings at all."

Matt shrugs. "We're hockey players," he points out, and Paul snorts a laugh, shaking his head.

"You know," he says slowly, in the contemplative voice he's got that at this point Matt is classically conditioned to freeze at, because it never seems to bode well for him, as he gestures with a sweet potato fry, "there's someone else you might could ask about all this who'd actually know what he's talking about."Matt slowly, suspiciously unfreezes. "And who's that?" he asks, slowly lifting a fry to his mouth.

Pauly shrugs. "Just - from what I hear, Nate might know a little bit more about this kind of thing than I do," and Matt nearly chokes to death on a fucking sweet potato.

"Come again?" he wheezes when he's more or less managed to clear his esophagus, and Paul looks torn between genuine concern and laughing his ass off.

"Well, it's just that according to the grapevine, he's actually your elder when it comes to this whole workplace-romance shit," Stast says, adding, "One of his old teammates from the Mooseheads, apparently," when all Matt can do is make an exaggeratedly confused look and sort of stare at him, shaking his head slowly.

It takes him a few minutes to recover from that well enough to say anything, so they sit there in silence for a little while, eating and, at least on Matt's part, figuring out just how the hell he's supposed to respond to that. MacKinnon is barely an adult, and maybe Matt's not particularly long in the tooth himself, thanks, but that doesn't mean he wants to turn up on their star rookie's doorstep asking for advice. He does, after all, still have _some_ pride, though this whole situation seems to be doing its best to strip it all away.

Then again, he thinks, taking a contemplative bite, he's kind of running out of ideas when it comes to dealing with this - thing. And it's not like he's in a position where can really turn down a second opinion - hockey players who date guys aren't exactly growing on trees, here.

So instead of saying thanks, but no thanks, he's fine without going to an overgrown puppy dog of an eighteen-year-old for help, no matter how crazy good the kid may be on the ice, he nods slowly and says, "Yeah, I'll do that. Thanks for the tip," wondering all the while just what he's getting himself into, here.

 

\---

Evidently what he's getting into is sitting on a couch in Jiggy's basement, trying to figure out a way to start the conversation without making everything incredibly awkward. He doesn't think he's doing a very good job, because Nate looks increasingly uncertain and also like he'd rather be anywhere but here.

"So," Matt says eventually, dragging the syllable out mostly to buy himself some time. "Um."

"You, uh. Said you wanted to talk to me about something?" Nate prompts, evidently getting more than a little tired of the hemming and hawing. He has to know this isn't about hockey, Matt thinks - not about the team, or, well. Not _really_ about the team, or else they could have talked about it somewhere else. But he doesn't really have a clue, because when he'd wandered over to him after skate and asked if they could talk sometime, Matt hadn't been able to come up with anything to hint at what exactly was on his mind. So now they're sitting here in the Gigeures' house and he _still_ doesn't know how to begin, and Nathan doesn't know enough about the situation to give him a push in the right direction, even.

Things are off to a great start.

Matt sighs almost noiselessly to himself. "Yeah," he says, still stalling, still wavering between being roundabout and being frank, until finally he glances down at his hands one last time where they're twisted nervously together in his lap and thinks, _Fuck it_.

"I heard," he chokes out; a poor beginning, maybe, but probably a little better than meaningless filler words. "I mean, Pauly told me - I've got this. Problem. And he told me you had been in an, um, sort of similar situation?" That wasn’t supposed to come out like a question. He's supposed to be a little more in control of this situation, but damn it, he just - telling Pauly had been one thing, and even that had been hard enough. It's admittedly easier to broach the topic now that he's a little more certain of where he stands relative to Patrick (on somewhat equal footing, for one thing), but - only a little.

"I," Nate says, sounding even more confused. "I mean, I kind of doubt I can help or anything, but. You know. Go ahead, I guess," and the way he waves his hand aimlessly comforts Matt a little, because it quite eloquently conveys a sense that they're both equally uncomfortable, here.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out all in a rush.

"I sort of have, um, a thing. For Patrick," he says, and watches understanding wash over Nate's blank face a few seconds later, slow to catch on but quick once it gets started, and as Nate's mouth falls open in surprise he rushes to continue, words suddenly tripping over one another where moments ago there'd been cloying silence: "And I know that's not really like your, um, your situation, but you're as close as I can get. And I just…" He trails off, frustrated, the words refusing to come out. "I needed to talk to someone who. Understood. At least a little bit."

MacKinnon still looks a little dumbfounded - okay, more than a little, but Matt's honestly trying to ignore how totally gobsmacked he looks, because that isn't exactly helping the tight, writhing nerves in his stomach - but he's at least nodding a little bit now.

"I get that," he says, slowly, but not at all sounding like the thinks Matt's crazy or disgusting or anything, more just sounding like he's not sure about talking about this, period. "I mean, if there had been someone for me to talk to when I was trying to figure things out with Jo, I would've…" He huffs a slightly self-deprecating laugh, and Matt blinks, a little surprised by the sound. "Things… might have gone a little bit better, there at first."

"Jo is… your guy, then," Matt says, a little uncertain, and Nate nods.

"Yeah, uh. Jonathan Drouin," Nate says, and a lot of things slot into place in Matt's head, Pauly's "one of his old teammates from the Mooseheads" coming back to him along with news articles he'd read in the lead up to the draft last spring, trying to get a feel for the top prospects; it had seemed like Drouin's name and Nate's had been inseparable as far as the press was concerned. A lot of things suddenly made sense, that pre-draft press included.

"Oh," he mumbles, a little dumbly even to his own ears, glancing down at the couch for lack of a better option. "So, you. Uh. How… how long have you two…?" Well, that didn't go so well, but whatever, Nate seems to have gotten the idea.

"I guess about a year now," and oh, he's blushing, that's… really sweet, actually. "Our, um. Our anniversary will be in December," and that's _really_ sweet, Jesus, he's about fifty times better at this than Matt is already, which is pretty alarming. "What… what about you?" he adds, sounding uncertain, and Matt decides, what the hell, might as well go all in.

"You remember that thing back in September, where he did that interview and mentioned me writing him a fanletter when I was, like, six?" Matt says with a little bit of a sigh, and Nate's eyes widen almost comically in understanding, a grin playing at the corners of his lips."Okay, no offense," he replies, laughing a little, "but that's hilarious."

Matt… should probably feel offended, but whatever. He's kind of right.

"We're not, um. Together, though. Not really," he hastens to clarify, and something sympathetic, or at least understanding, passes over Nate's face.

"I get that, believe me," he says, nodding slowly. "Sucks, and it's hard to figure out what to do about it, you know?"

Matt lets out a hard breath, relief pricking at his fingertips as he nods. "Yeah," he replies, his voice maybe a little more hoarse than he would have liked, but then again he doubts Nate's going to mention this conversation to anyone, so it's unlikely he'll get chirped over getting a little emotional, here. "Yeah, it really does suck."

"I was there for months," Nate tells him, then adds, a little sheepishly, "and we'd probably still be doing that if Jo wasn't smarter than me." He grins, lopsided, cheeks pinking again. "He finally just, um. Yelled at me a little bit for being an idiot, and then made me take him out for sushi."

Somehow, smart and wonderful as Patrick may be, Matt kind of doubts he can hope for that sort of rescue from this weird half-hope.

Maybe that comes across on his face, at least a little, because Nate kind of winces and asks, "Have you two, uh. Talked about it? At all?"

"Not… not really," Matt admits after a brief pause, rueful, and gets another bashful, and kind of confused, but sympathetic nod in return.

"Well, sorry I'm not gonna be much help," Nate sighs, ruffling a hand through his hair. "We're, uh. Still basically making stuff up as we go along, me and Jo, especially now that…" He trails off, and Matt fills in the blank in his head: _now that we're thousands of miles apart and I don't even get to play against him a few times a year like I thought I would._

"No, don't apologize. I’m glad we, you know, I'm glad I talked to you," Matt tells him hurriedly, and he's a bit shocked to find that he actually means it.

"You know who you should talk to instead of me, who might be a little better at all this - you know, stuff?" Nate says suddenly, all at once, and on the one hand Matt's interested, because hey, he's still looking for anyone who can give him some advice on how to handle this shit. But on the other hand… oh, God. He's going to have to talk to _another_ person about this, isn't he?

Well. It sucks, but it's an easy choice at the same time. "In for a penny, in for a pound," he mutters, then says more clearly, "Yeah, I mean, anyone you think would help?"

"I really think you should talk to Gabe," Nathan says, earnest now, and Matt only barely stops himself from groaning aloud. "I kind of - he, uh, he helps me out a lot with this. Stuff. I mean, he sort of, um, found out…" He trails off, blushing, and Matt gets the feeling he _really_ doesn't want the details. "About, uh, me and Jo. And he's been really helpful." He shrugs, one-shouldered, looking a little sheepish still. "It's just nice to have someone to talk to, you know?"

At least, he thinks more resignedly than sourly, this will all make coming out to the team a little easier, if he ever gets around to that.

 

\---

He waits a few days before he even tries to call Gabe, just so he doesn't feel like a _complete_ idiot.

He's beginning to feel really stupid about all the back-and-forth, here, but then again, this time it's _Gabe_. He knows Gabe; Gabe is friendly and helpful and very good at captaining, which is, after all, why they made him captain, and - or so Matt tries to convince himself - that's all this is, really. Just a… different sort of advice or guidance than he would usually seek from his captain. But whatever, he doesn't feel weird about it at all. Really. Not even a little.

He does sort of. Well. Put it off for a little while, though, just so he doesn't feel totally ridiculous.

Matt calls him on their next day off, fingers only shaking a tiny, tiny bit as he navigates through his address book and presses "call".

Gabe mercifully picks up on the second ring, cutting short any opportunity Matt might have had to, well, to really, really freak himself out.

"Hey, Dutchy," he says easily, voice warm and friendly as anything, and Matt has to remind himself that this is Gabe. This is - this is going to be fine. Gabe's done work with You Can Play, Gabe's Swedish, and Gabe is just generally also not an asshole. This will be _fine_.

It's just a little different bringing it up with someone who doesn't have… shared experience, per se. At least, not that Matt knows about. Jesus, that's a thought.

"Hi," he says after a pause that's perhaps a few seconds too long. "Um," he hesitates again, practically squirming in his seat with awkwardness even though Gabe's not even in the same damn room. "I was just wondering, um, if you maybe had some time to come over and, uh," he swallows heavily, carefully keeps his voice even, "review some tape?"

There's silence from the other end of the line this time, and then a soft huff of laughter. "You don't have to make excuses if you want to talk," Gabe says, and Matt _wilts_. Freaking of course he saw right through that. Of _course_ he did. Dammit. "But okay. We can, uh," and Matt's sure he's not imagining the smirk in his voice, good-natured though it almost certainly is, " _review some tape_ , if you want."

He groans quietly, and Gabe outright laughs at him. "I'll be over in an hour or so, is that okay?" he asks, grin all too audible, and Matt sighs but agrees.

"That'll be just fine. Uh, thank you," he adds, tense and embarrassed all over again, but Gabe just chuckles again, gently this time.

"Don't worry about it. Just, you know. Next time you try that, try to remember that if you _actually_ wanted to watch tape, you wouldn't sound so nervous about it," he says cheerfully. "See you soon!"

"See you soon," Matt echoes, and the line clicks off.

He very, very carefully stops himself from banging his head against the wall, but it's a near thing.

The doorbell rings almost precisely an hour later, and Matt swings it open to find Gabe holding a stack of what look like - dammit, actual game tapes.

"You know, I _could_ have been serious about that," Matt grumbles, but as he shuts the door behind Gabe with a soft _snick_ he's forced to admit that just seeing someone else be so relaxed about this is helping him feel a little less - well. Tense. Nate hadn't exactly helped on that front, but Landy's successfully moved past being an awkward teenage boy, so there's a point in his favor already.

"Yes, you could!" Gabe says agreeably, wandering toward the kitchen unbidden and setting the tapes down on the counter with a teasing thunk. "But you aren't. It's okay, I brought them anyway in case you want to, you know, put off whatever it is you wanted to talking about and watch these for a few hours instead."

Matt doesn't even think about taking him up on that. Not even a little bit. Really.

"No, I think I'm less likely to explode if we just get it over with," he says grudgingly, leaning one hip against the counter himself and crossing his arms a bit self-consciously.

Gabe whistles lowly, brows knitting together just the tiniest bit. "That bad, huh?" he asks, though he doesn't sound that surprised. Matt's not sure what to make of that.

"Yeah, well." He looks at the ground, at the ceiling, at the other wall. He looks back at Gabe. Gabe's got one eyebrow raised like he finds this a little amusing, but he's not outright laughing, so he's still doing better than Pauly. "Um. Look - there's just not an easy way to, uh, say this. I think I'm just going to have to. All at once?"

Matt doesn't really think that was overly coherent, but it must have gone over okay. "Go ahead," Gabe says, nodding, serious now, and he takes a deep breath.

Maybe it's that he hasn't really said it in so many words, yet, not even to himself, but something about squaring his shoulders and looking across his kitchen and meeting Gabe's eyes and saying, "I'm into guys," like he's _sure_ of it, like he has any idea what's going on in his life at the moment and that isn't the reason they're standing here awkwardly, it feels - really strange. Lighter, immediately lighter, but heavy, too, all at once.

Gabe, to his credit, doesn't even bat an eyelash. "Okay," he says, simply, and Matt acknowledges that with a firm nod even as he feels sharp relief blooming through his chest; he's not out of the woods yet, though, and he takes another deep breath in, steadying himself.

"I'm also into Patrick," he says, just as firmly, just as sure, and this time he can see it as Gabe processes that, watch it filter across his face in stages: confusion/understanding/surprise/understanding/acceptance. "And - and Patrick's into me."

"You're sure of that?" Gabe asks, quietly, and he must see Matt flinch even though he tries to stop himself, because he holds out a hand placatingly and his expression softens. "I don't mean - just. I don't want you to go to him about it and then have that end… poorly."

He shakes his head stiffly, finding that his ability to look Gabe square in the eyes has mostly faded for the course of this conversation. "No, we. We talked about it, um, after that party at his house a week ago?"

Gabe narrows his eyes. "You didn't try to have that conversation drunk, did you? Because you were totally tanked, Matty, you fell asleep on the couch and we couldn't wake you up hours later. Trust me, Pauly and Ginner tried," he adds dryly.

Huh. Patrick hadn't told him that part. "No, I mean - by the time we talked, I was. Mostly sober?" That's a lie, but not a _huge_ one. Based on Gabe's expression, he knows it, too, but he doesn't push.

"Okay," he says instead, "so then - don’t take this the wrong way, I'm really glad you felt like you could, I don't know, trust me with this, but - why are you talking to _me_ about it?"

Matt swallows. "Uh, well, we didn't exactly…" He trails off, not sure exactly what to say. Didn't set up any dates? He didn’t ask me to go steady? God, wouldn't that have been interesting. He has a sudden image of himself in a cheesy, 50s-style burgundy and blue letter jacket with Roy on the back and Patrick wearing a matching one that says Duchene and has to stifle a rather ill-timed bout of hysterics. "I mean… It's - it's kind of crazy, isn't it?" he tries again, scuffing one foot along the floor and staring down at it. "There's no way we could… I mean. I mean, even if we both want to, it’s so…"

He doesn't quite manage to finish that sentence, and Gabe makes a considering noise. "Well," he admits, and there's something in his tone that makes Matt force himself to look up, "yeah. To be honest, it is a little crazy. And pretty tough, I mean…" He scrubs a hand through his hair, his eyebrows scrunching together in a way that might otherwise be comical. "I don't envy you, jeeze."

Matt snorts at that, rolling his eyes skyward and shaking his head slightly. "Preaching to the choir," he says - okay, he grumbles, but Gabe grins at him.  
"I know, I know," he agrees, shifting his weight and studying Matt from across an expanse of floor that he swears wasn't half this size fifteen minutes ago. "But - okay, it's tough, and it's crazy, whatever, and I’m pretty sure I’m not really supposed to be encouraging you, but - I mean, you want my opinion on this, on what you should do, right, that's why you wanted to talk to me?" he asks, and Matt nods, almost hesitant.

Gabe lets out his breath in one great sighing _whoosh_ and squeezes his eyes shut for just the briefest moment before blinking them open again. "Well, first of all, I - part of me can't believe I'm saying this, but I think you should do it," he says, firmly, his voice just a half-notch lower than usual because of an added weight in it that Matt's not particularly used to hearing away from the ice. "I mean, if you think it'll make you happy, and make Patrick happy, in the long run, then I think you've gotta do it."

That's - good, and maybe a week ago that would have been enough, maybe before he got too drunk and really, really fell in love that would have been enough, but: "Easier said than done," he mutters, and that's enough to shake a laugh out of Gabe.

"I'm getting there, hold on," he says, grinning, but then he puts the serious face back on, pausing as though to gather his thoughts, then: "Talk to him."

Matt waits one beat, two, three, but Gabe's not saying anything else, just staring at him.

"What," he says flatly, not even really a question, and the corner of Gabe's mouth twitches upwards. He bits his lip and looks down, thinking, then raises his head again to meet Matt's gaze, his expression weirdly determined.

"Look," he says, his voice just a little soft but also firm and serious, "you're not alone. Since you talked to Nate, I guess you know you're not even alone on this _team_ , let alone the league - but look, what's most important is, you're not alone because you have Patrick. You two are in this together."

And - fuck, but it hits Matt that he's _right_. He doesn't know why it sticks to him like this to have heard it out loud, from someone else's mouth, but it seems more solid, more dependable somehow, and that's good. He really needed that. He probably should have been able to get it like this without anyone having to tell it to him, but whatever; he's got it now, feels it warm and _right_ in his gut, like a little bit of the way he feels when he's stepping onto the ice alongside some of his favorite people in the world. This feels just a little bit like _team_ , in its own way, and he's honestly surprised it took him this long to realize that.

"You've just gotta talk to him, Dutch," Gabe finishes, and, yeah. He's right about that - right about everything, apparently, not that Matt will tell him that for fear of sounding like a Gabe Landeskog fanboy in addition to the Patrick Roy fanboy everyone's already decided he is.

"Thanks," he says, "thank you," a tiny bit breathless and enormously more sure, and Landy beams at him.

They stand there like idiots for a solid fifteen seconds of silence before Matt has the presence of mind to cough awkwardly and say, "So. That was probably our deep conversation quota for the day, right?""Definitely," Gabe agrees quickly, then glances down at the little stack of boxes sitting next to him on the counter. "Hey, since I brought all these videos anyway, do you want to-"

"Definitely," Matt agrees just as fast, and goes to set up the TV.

 

\---

Of course, as nice as it would be if this were the case, talking to Gabe Landeskog doesn’t magically solve all of one's problems. Or even, as it turns out, _one_ of one's problems.

"What do you get someone for Christmas when they're your coach but also your - well, not really your… something, but you want them to be?" is the first thing to come tumbling out of Matt's mouth when Stats picks up the phone, and he winces slightly, wishing he'd taken the time to phrase that better.  
He can practically hear the frown on the other end of the line. "Well, I dunno," Paul says slowly. "Far as I know, you're sort of blazing that particular trail, so Miss Manners doesn't exactly have anything to say about it, or if she does I wouldn't know."

Matt sighs and lets his head _thunk_ against the back of the couch. It's been two days since he - well, since he came out to Gabe (it's still a little strange, to think of coming out as something he's going to be, apparently, actually doing, but he's getting there). In the intervening time, his thought process has essentially gone like this:

1\. Gabe's right. He has to talk to Patrick.  
2\. That's still easier said than done. It's not exactly a conversation he's sure of - his experience in this field is, well. Minimal. He has no idea how he's going to walk up and start _talking_ about this, no real idea when or where it's even appropriate to do so, just a general sense of when it isn't, which is helpful, but not nearly enough.  
3\. He's got a lot of other things on his mind, too. November is bringing with it a million tiny reminders, and plenty of huge ones as well, that the holiday season is upon him, and after that it's just one quick downhill slide to the Olympics. God, the _Olympics_. Whether or not he's going, there's an extra weight hanging over him if ever there was one.  
4\. Thinking about the holidays gives him an idea, though. Maybe it's kind of cheesy - definitely it's kind of cheesy, actually - but, well, a little bit of cheese actually ought to make it less nerve-wracking. He thinks. Whatever, he's not above using Christmas as a crutch.  
5\. Okay, so that's it, then. That's how he's going to at least get the ball rolling: Christmas. Okay. He can do this.  
6\. …except, crap. That's all well and good, but what do you get the man who, presumably, has everything, not to mention the man you're trying to woo (and here his brain fritzes out a bit, still having trouble connecting himself and Patrick Roy and the subject of wooing), despite numerous and notable societal roadblocks?

So, finally, he gave up and called Pauly. One day he's going to stop needing help with this kind of shit, but, well. One day.

There's a muffled crackling on the other end of the line, like Paul's shifting around to get more comfortable. "So, I'm just going to take a wild guess here," he says, "and assume you've seen one too many Hallmark specials, now that it's officially time for all the Christmas marketing to roll on out, and you're going to try to _show him how you feel_ with a _beautiful, heartfelt, perfect_ -"

"Okay, okay," Matt interrupts, grinning despite himself at his goofy tone. "I mean, I wouldn't put it that way, exactly, but you're not wrong."

"Of course I’m not," Pauly scoffs; Matt can practically see him roll his eyes exaggeratedly. "So do you have any idea at all what you want to do, or are we going in blind, here?"

Matt sighs, running one hand through his hair, thinks absentmindedly that he should really get it cut soon, it's getting a bit long. "No," he admits, and doesn't miss Pauly's unsurprised snort from the other end of the call. "I mean, I have some ideas of what I _don't_ want to do? Does that help?"

"Well, it's better than nothing."

He snorts; that's probably fair. "Yeah. I mean - not _much_ better, but better, I guess."

"You know, I can't do this for you." Pauly's voice is gentle, almost uncharacteristically so, but still reproachful. "If I wanted to date Patrick, _I'd_ date Patrick; I wouldn't do it by living vicariously through you. I'm not against helping you out," he adds, hastily, as though he thinks Matt's going to be offended or misunderstand, "but, you know."

"You're cutting me off?" Matt asks, surprised, but he's laughing a little and it shows in his voice. "And here I thought you had my best interests at heart, Pauly. I'm hurt."

"It's for the best," Stast answers almost serenely, and Matt laughs again. Maybe he's right, though. Maybe thinking it out on his own will be what it takes - maybe it'll even be good for him.

It takes a week of thinking about it on and off (but mostly, if he's being honest, on, even if only at the back of his mind) before he comes up with anything beyond "Some cuff links, maybe? A nice tie?" He goes through what feels like every classic option in the book, from cologne to watches, but none of that - none of that's right, that's not _them_. Stuff like that, that's too… stiff, almost, and possibly too generic, and also not nearly _enough_ to say what he wants this to say. Same goes for getting him something hockey related, which is an idea that also makes him squirm because it seems like he's focusing too much on work and not their whatever-this-is. While that feels safe, because hockey, for what it's worth, almost _always_ feels safe, familiar, right, it's not right for this, at least not right now. So he thinks about it, and he thinks about it some more, and he dicks around on the internet trying to come up with ideas, and he drops casual questions in conversations with nearly everyone he knows about what _they're_ getting their significant other for Christmas, and out of all these attempts he still comes up with nothing.

When it does finally hit him, he's forced to wonder why it took as long as it did; from the other side of the equation it seems as obvious as it had been that first perennially embarrassing night when he was six years old.

There's only one thing he _can_ do, really, he realizes suddenly, lying there in bed on in mid-December when the pressure to come up with _something_ , and fast, is really beginning to set in. He's in that weird, drifting pre-sleep place where thoughts seem too bright and too hazy all at once, and he figures it out in a second: he'll write a letter.

He sits up and gets out of bed almost on autopilot, his brain suddenly a mess of responses to that pivotal thought. It's an excellent idea, really, he decides as he turns on the lights and roots around in his bedside table for something to write on, just to get the initial surge of ideas out before they're gone. There's a nice symmetry to it, though maybe it's a little bit pretentious to actually think that about his actual life; but, really, it's a sort of closure that satisfies something in his gut that he hadn't even realized he needed to satisfy. Besides, he's… admittedly not always the greatest with words, though he likes to think he has his moments, and if there's one thing that his past exploits in letter-writing seem to have proven, it's that words are much more manageable when he's putting them down on paper.

He doesn't intend to write the whole thing like this, up too late propped up against his headboard with a shitty ballpoint pen he snagged from some hotel and the back of a half-crumpled piece of paper on a bedraggled legal pad he's had since he was probably 17 and never actually used up - but he does. Because once he starts he finds that he honestly can't stop, can't satisfy the drive in the back of his mind with anything less than _everything_.

And it really is everything. He's a little embarrassed by it even as he writes - and he'll sure as hell be embarrassed later, especially if/when he has to watch Patrick _read_ the damn thing.

It's rough, at first, with lots of words scratched out or scribbled over or inserted over top and to the side with little arrows, but it goes something like this:

_Patrick,_

_I've been trying to figure out how to say this to you for weeks now. Maybe for a lot longer than that, if I’m being honest. And maybe writing it down is a little bit of a cop-out, but I can't help it - I don't know how else to do this, and this way you don't have to listen to me stutter and get my words mixed around and probably screw it up, so I think it's a win-win, really.I don't think you know how much you coming to Denver has meant to me. I'm not going to say anything stupid, like I've been in love with you for years and years or I've been waiting for you to come to me or anything like that, but I am going to say that even though that stuff isn't true, this is: I want a chance with you. I'm willing to put a lot of stuff on the line to have a chance with you. That's probably really stupid, I know, but I'm not sure what else to do. I guess it kind of feels like you were something I didn't even know I was waiting for, but now that I know, I don't think I can wait any longer._

_If you don't want to, I understand. I know it's a lot to risk. I know there's a possibility it won't work out, and what that could mean for the team and for everything else. I know that there are so many risks involved, more than I ever thought I’d be taking for something like this, and more than I should ask of you – I know it’s selfish, I know. I promise I won't push. But, Patrick - if there's even a tiny chance you think this could work, please say yes. Every time I see you, I can't keep myself still, or calm, or rational, and I can't help but think that means something. Something important._

_Please at least think about it. I'll wait as long as you need._

_Yours always,  
Matt_

He leans back, his hands shaking a little bit. It's funny, really, he thinks as he reads it back over, but it doesn't seem so big looking at it from this side. He's not very good at all the flowery romance stuff, so maybe it's a little stiff, but something tells him Patrick will get it anyway. Besides, it would probably sound stupid written out on paper - some things just aren't meant to be written down, maybe.

Whatever; he can philosophize about it in the morning, and also find some nicer paper to write it out on, and a good pen too. For now, he rolls over and goes to sleep, a warm, satisfied feeling sitting fresh in his chest where there used to be a knot of worry.

 

\---

He ends up going to Nordstrom and getting a tie anyway.

He dithers about it back and forth for a few days, but decides he'll feel really weird if he shows up with just a letter, so he gives in. It's a very nice tie - a deep, crystalline blue, and it makes him feel a little better when he wakes up on Christmas morning, eats breakfast, puts on a thick cable-knit sweater and a warm coat and his nicest jeans, and drives over to Patrick's.

Well - not right away. He Skypes his family first, watches them unwrap packages he'd sent weeks before wrapped as neatly as he can manage, laughs with them for a couple of hours and lets that unravel the tightly-wound nerves in his stomach for a while. And he gives Paisley _his_ Christmas gift - an enormous rawhide he'd very carefully picked out on his last day off - and leaves him to enjoy it before spending nearly an hour trying to decide whether this was a jeans or slacks occasion. Something in him rebels at making it too casual, insisting this should be something almost formal, but he finally reaches for the jeans instead, since, after all, he's just going to visit a - friend. A friend. And, really, he wouldn't wear slacks for Gabe - or, God forbid, for Pauly - so he doesn't wear them for Patrick, either, because more than anything else, he doesn't want this to be weird.

(Plus, if he had a miniaturized version of himself in a devil costume on one shoulder, that guy would be telling him the jeans make his ass look _amazing_ , because… well, because they do.)

At any rate, he ends up driving on mostly-empty roads to Patrick's big shiny house in the suburbs, the radio quietly humming holiday music beneath the engine noise. It's three in the afternoon, a decently respectable time to visit, he thinks, and the sun is shining brightly overhead, the sky a cool blue and a few thin snowdrifts caught up on the sides of the road as he whirrs past them.

His nerves are back well before he even gets there, and they only get worse as he pulls into the driveway, the neighborhood almost, almost familiar now, and ever-so-slowly drags his feet up the front walk, but that's fine. He knew that was coming.

The door swings open not a minute after he finally musters up the courage to ring the bell, Patrick staring at him somewhat surprised, in a holey, comfortable-looking old sweatshirt and well-worn jeans.

"Merry Christmas," he says, like it's automatic, and then, "What are you doing here, Matty?"

The first part is easy enough to answer; it's the second that gets him. "Um. Merry Christmas," Matt replies, lifting up the box with the tie and, more importantly, the thick, smooth cream envelope with the letter for observation. "I come bearing gifts?"

That wasn't really supposed to come out like a question, but Patrick just smiles and holds the door open wide for him to come in, so it works out.

Patrick takes his coat and then leads him into the living room, and Matt follows without a word. There's a big, delicious-smelling spruce tree in the corner, twinkling lights wrapped all around the branches, and there's a fire burning low in the fireplace on the other side of the room; Matt sits down on the couch and sets the package down beside him and takes it all in, taking deep, soothing breaths of the calm air and trying to ignore the rising nervousness and nausea at the bottom of his stomach.

"So," Patrick says, voice light, coming to sit on the other end of the couch, just far enough away to not make it strange, just enough distance to keep things somewhat normal, somewhat safe. It's a good effort. "What do we have here?"

"Oh, uh," Matt stutters, only barely able to make eye contact. He scoots the package toward Patrick an inch, then thinks twice and picks it up properly to hand it over. That might not have been the best idea, though, because their fingers brush and catch and - okay, yeah, he thinks managing to give the damn thing to Patrick without actually dropping it is an accomplishment. "It's not much, but. Uh, open the box first," he adds hastily, prolonging his whatever-this-is, self-inflicted angst, maybe, for just a spare minute longer.

Patrick oohs and ahs over the tie, gives him a "Merci beaucoup, Dutchy" and a smile, and crumples the wrapping paper up in a tight ball to set aside before he reaches for the envelope.

Puking on Patrick's couch is not a good way to convey his sentiments, Matt _knows_ that, but it's beginning to feel more and more like he won't be able to stop himself.

He's so busy trying to aim for calm, even breathing that he barely notices when Patrick slips his fingers under the edge of the heavy paper and flips open the envelope. The stationary inside is exquisite, too, and Matt worried it was a little much, but though Patrick's eyebrows raise slightly, he doesn't say anything. He just unfolds the letter slowly and starts tracking the words across the page.

He knows for sure that Patrick's finished reading when he looks up to meet Matt's eyes and makes a wordlessly questioning noise. Matt clears his throat, steels himself, and tries his best to explain.

"So," he starts, "I've talked to a lot of people lately. I mean - not a lot, a lot." Oh, God, he's _already_ totally fucking this up. He's barely started it and he's already fucking it up. "Not, uh - just people I trust. Teammates. Pauly, and Nate, and Gabe."

Patrick looks torn between hilarity and terror. "And what did all these people say back?" he asks, voice clipped in a way that Matt's just starting to learn means that he's defensive, but not angry. Which, you know, is a positive.

That makes him feel a little better, and he grins, just this side of shaky. "They told me I’m an idiot, mostly," he confesses. "And that I should have been telling you what I told them, instead."

There's something utterly raw about the look on Patrick's face, like he's not even breathing anymore, like he can't bear to. Matt feels that same exact thing thrumming under his skin, where he's gotten so good at hiding it after years and years of thinking it was impossible and deadly - but more importantly, where he's suddenly, finally learned to let it go. More than anything else, that's what makes him keep talking.

"I'm in love with you," he admits, watching it hit Patrick like a shot to the gut even as he feels indescribably lighter for having said it. "I'm not going to say that I have been since I was a kid, or anything stupid like that, because I didn't even _know_ you then, but. I am now. And I'll do - whatever it takes," and he's determined, he _means_ it, and he can see from the way Patrick's eyes are tracking over his face that he gets that, "to turn this into something real."

" _Matty,_ " Patrick groans more than says, holding his hands placatingly out in front of him like they can be some sort of shield. "We can't, you know that. You know all of the reason why."

"No, I don't," Matt contradicts, just slightly brazen in the way he scoots over until their knees are knocking together and wraps Patrick's hands up in his until the shields turn in on themselves. "I know - look, I know it'll be tough. Nigh on fucking impossible," he says, finds Patrick's eyes and holds them with all of the clarity and determination he can muster. "But it's _not_ impossible, not quite. And I've never wanted this with anyone before, really, but I want it with you."

Patrick swears under his breath, Quebecois blasphemies that Matt can only vaguely recognize. "This is incredibly stupid," he mutters, and Matt _soars._

"We do a lot of stupid things," he points out, barely hiding a grin. "Doesn't make 'em hopeless."

"As you prove every day," Patrick growls, and - that doesn't even really make _sense_ , and his mouth is twisted down in a scowl, but he can't quite hide the way his eyes are shining just a little, and Matt practically chokes on a breathless laugh as he leans over and up and into him and seals their mouths together all in one quick, smooth motion.

When they pull apart, Patrick's smiling, and Matt feels like someone's separated all of his nerves from his body, leaving just a breathless tingling under his skin. He doesn't know what to say - doesn't know if there's anything more he _can_ say, but Patrick's smile is still there, and growing.

"I guess I never was one to turn down a challenge," he says, and Matt laughs again, somewhere between shocked and dizzy with relief.

"I guess not," he agrees, and what he means is probably something in the vicinity of _I think I'm probably in love with you_ , with maybe a touch of _This is crazy, this is fucking insane, I'm so glad we're doing it anyway_ , and he thinks Patrick hears both of those loud and clear based on the way he leans in and busses an almost surprisingly tender kiss on Matt's forehead."Come on," he says as he leans away, tugging Matt's arm with that same familiar twinkle in his eyes, and Matt's heart stutters in his breast. "There's Christmas dinner in the kitchen, if you want to help me make it."

It's almost surreal, Matt thinks as he putters around in Patrick's shadow, doing what he's told, chopping what he's told to chop and putting into the oven the things he's told to put in the oven. It's pretty simple - nothing like the slightly extravagant Thanksgiving dinner they'd had before. It's more than a little mind-blowing, honestly - that seems like so long ago, back when Matt had no idea anything like this was possible. Every time they brushed shoulders or bumped their hands together trying to pass dishes across the table had sent a little shock running up Matt's arms and up into his cheeks, burning them permanently pink; now he gets the same feeling but it's from hands around his waist shifting him out of the way, putting him exactly where Patrick wants him, or brief kisses pressed everywhere his skin is exposed - his neck, the corner of his mouth, his hands, once, even though they're a little greasy from where he's busy wrapping bacon around beautiful baby asparagus. It's like something has snapped between them - now that Patrick _can_ touch him, he can't help himself. It makes Matt shiver, just a little.

"Were you going to make all this for just you?" he asks as he puts the asparagus in the oven, closing the oven door and then leaning his shoulder against it as casually as he can, given the circumstances.

"Oh, no," Patrick laughs, shaking his head. "No, but I bought the stuff anyway, just in case."

Matt snorts softly. "Always prepared, huh?"

"Have to be ready for anything," Patrick agrees, grinning wolfishly at him as he crosses the kitchen, coming to a stop just bare centimeters from where Matt's skin is sparking like a summer storm. "Never know when one of my boys might need me."

" _One_ of your boys?" Matt asks reproachfully, trying his very hardest not to lean into him, cross that miniscule distance and press them together, chest to chest.

"Aw, Dutchy," Patrick says, and his tone is suddenly different, softer. "You're not that, eh? You're…" He gestures almost absently with one hand, looks like he's searching for something - the question, of course, is searching for _what_.

Finally, after a few moments' pause, he looks Matt in the eyes, steady, and says, "Me too. That letter? Me too."

And - that was implied, obviously, but it's sure nice to hear him say it.

"The boys don't all write me nice letters like that," he adds, and his voice sounds like it's trying to be lighter but doesn't quite manage it. "And even if they did, I wouldn't care, huh?"

What Matt tries to say is "I should certainly hope not", but it sort of gets swallowed up when Patrick kisses him soundly, warm and kind of mind-numbing in the best possible way. For just a moment, he forgets where he is, forgets how foreign this feels, forgets that eventually he's going to have to leave and go back out in public, forgets the feeling lingering in the back of his mind that tells him this isn't something they can have out in the rest of the world. All he knows as they stand there together in Patrick's warm, bright kitchen, Christmas dinner in process all around them, is that they can have it together. And at least for that moment, that's enough - more than enough. That's perfect.

 

\---

The moment ends.

But, of course, they're still there together. They eat less than an hour later, at the big stately pine dining table even though it's just the two of them. Honestly, Matt spends the entire time half-expecting a troupe of the other guys to come clattering in the door, but they don't; everyone's home with their families, apparently, or at least their friends. He spares a moment to wonder how Nate's doing, when the people he surely wishes he were with right now are all, as far as Matt knows, in Halifax. But then again, he might not have family here, but he's got _team_ , and that's - well, not the same, but. It's something.

After dinner they crowd together over the sink to do the dishes; Matt washes and Patrick dries, and they bump elbows every few seconds, and Matt is honestly more surprised by how _normal_ it feels than anything else. Maybe he didn't notice it because he was too busy eating, but the strangeness lingering in his bones seems to have ebbed in the intervening time - it's still there, but quieter, enough so that he can ignore it without even trying, more or less. He just scrubs off the next dish, soaps it, rinses it, passes it to Patrick, and it's… fine. It's not flawless yet, but it's getting there.

They migrate to the living room, Patrick with a glass of wine cupped almost gracefully in one hand, Matt regretfully eyeing the clock and thinking that he really should probably head home at some point. But Patrick sits down and draws Matt down with him, and turns on the TV, and what else do they find playing on NBC but the Charlie Brown Christmas special. So, naturally, he has to stay and at least watch that.

Somewhere around the first commercial break, they're pressed together shoulder to hip, and Patrick's arm is casually thrown over the back of the couch, Somewhere around the second, dinner is starting to catch up with him - God, he should _not_ have eaten so much, that was incredibly stupid and he's going to regret it in the morning, but whatever, it's the holidays - and he leans over and puts his head on Patrick's shoulder.

When he blinks awake, the movie's over - been over for some time, if the way the light's changed is any indication - and Patrick laughs at him when he jolts suddenly upright, still blinking sleep from his eyes, still comfortably warm and with the solid weight of a good meal in his gut.

"You need to stop falling asleep on my couch," Patrick teases quietly, the dim hum of the TV a quiet backdrop.

"Sorry," Matt says, sheepish, voice scratchy, the back end of the word marred horribly by a massive yawn. Patrick chuckles and shakes his head, tugging him back over where he's shifted to bring back a little of that space and strangeness that they were trembling on the edge of earlier.

"Don’t be." He looks tired too, Matt notices, and also incredibly satisfied. "It's nice. Just, it's getting late. Maybe…" And Matt's not used to hearing that kind of hesitation, not from him, and yet it makes him feel a little better to know he's not the only one feeling a little out of his depth. "Maybe we head upstairs instead, huh?"

Matt gives himself a second to think about that, a little pause for self-evaluation. The thing is, it only _takes_ a second, because underneath the lingering film of strangeness and uncertainty, he's _sure_. If nothing else, he knows how he feels about this.

"Yeah," he says, smiling. "Okay."

 

\---

He only manages to drag himself home the next morning because he knows that Paisley will be waiting for him, desperately needing to be let out and fed. If he didn't have a dog needing him back at the house, he - well. He doesn't want to think about how easy it would have been to stay until Patrick finally asked him to leave. _If_ Patrick asked him to leave; neither of them is too eager to say goodbye.

Part of it is that Patrick's bed is warm. His bedroom is warm, too, but enough cooler that it takes a concentrated effort for Matt to force himself to leave behind the soft cradle of the crimson down comforter, even after Patrick's already gotten up and taken the extra body heat with him. Even once he's made it downstairs, the tile floor of the kitchen is cool under his feet but the room is just as cozy as it had been the night before, and, sometime late while they were asleep, it had snowed - just a light dusting, nothing too crazy, but enough that he'll be loath to wreck it with footprints when he does, eventually, make his way back home.

Patrick makes him a ham-and-cheese omelet with some of the leftover meat from dinner, and strong, smooth coffee, and leans bleary-eyed against the counter waiting for the toast to pop in flannel pajama pants and a soft, worn gray t-shirt, and Matt feels something click into place in his chest.

They're both pretty quiet for most of the morning, just shuffling around murmuring the occasional soft word or nudging one another absently just because they can. In a way, it feels like everything that needs to has already been said; in a way, it feels like what's happening now is something he couldn't quite put into words, if he even wanted to. So, with nothing left to do, Matt keeps quiet, just enjoying everything he can, and Patrick, evidently, does the same.

Soon enough, though, he's putting his dishes in the sink and gathering up his clothes - he'd stripped down to his boxers and t-shirt to sleep, half-wanting to ask to borrow something of Patrick's but just this side of nervous about pushing his luck, so to speak - and tugging his coat into place over his shoulders, reaching into the breast pocket to make sure his keys are still where he left them. Patrick follows him into the entryway and hovers, still not saying much of anything, third or perhaps fourth cup of coffee clutched tightly in one hand.

Matt leans down to tie his shoes, and when he straightens up again Patrick has his mouth open slightly, like he's trying to say something. Matt raises one eyebrow at him, a smile playing nervously at the corner of his mouth, and he huffs and reaches out almost imperiously to cup Matt's cheek in his palm.

"Drive safe," he says, somehow a little quieter than Matt was expecting, and he nods, hearing everything else that's humming just under the surface of that statement.

"I will," he says, something thick sticking a little bit in his throat. Patrick nods, apparently satisfied, and lets his hand drop.

Before he can stop himself, he leans up just slightly and presses a brief kiss to Patrick's mouth, chaste and sweeter than even he thought it would be. When he pulls back moments later, he can feel the blush already hot in his cheeks, and he hastily turns to go before he can embarrass himself any farther.  
He has to turn around to close the door, though, and when he does he sees that Patrick hasn't moved a muscle, watching him go with an expression Matt completely and utterly cannot classify.

He shuts the door and tries to pretend his heart doesn't feel full to bursting. He fails - of course he fails, the odds are totally stacked against him - but that's okay, really. He's probably at a point now where it's okay to admit these things to himself.

They leave that night for a quick trip to Chicago, and he sleeps better than he's slept in months, even with the airplane noise all around him and the constant vibration of the engines deep in his bones.

 

\---

He doesn't even go home to his own house from the Can on New Year's Eve; he left Paisley well-off for the night, because there's nothing wrong with being prepared, and there's nothing and no one else that would need him there, so he just follows Patrick home at a reasonable distance.

It's late - really late - but not quite midnight yet; they get back just in time to turn on the TV and catch the last forty-five minutes or so of the wait for the ball drop. They're both exhausted; it was a good game against Columbus, two assists for Matt and an end to their losing streak for everyone, but it's almost midnight, it's been quite a long day, and it's felt, for this past week, like everything was on fast-forward. Now, slumping against Patrick on the couch watching Ryan Seacrest bounce around Times Square like a hyperactive six-year-old, he finally feels like he can stop and breathe.

There's a lot that's about to happen, he thinks as he leans into Patrick's shoulder and lets his eyes drift closed for just a second. The Olympic roster announcement will happen soon, for one thing, and then - hopefully - in about a month in a half, there'll be Sochi. And then after that, the breathless rush for the playoffs, which don't seem like a pipe dream this year; something they'll have to work for, yes, but nothing like the guilty weight of knowing deep down that they're not going to make the cut is with him this year. Instead, there's this lingering image at the back of his mind, of the team all clustered together on the ice, screaming joyfully at each other, and hoisting a certain big and shiny something over their heads, and maybe it's not this year, or even next year or the year after that, but Matt has a feeling that's it's going to be _some_ time, and whenever it is - Patrick's going to be there with him.

He's almost dozed off completely, with that little fantasy playing behind his eyelids; he jumps a foot in the air when the countdown starts, more feeling the rumble through Patrick's side than actually hearing his "Ten, nine, eight…" He manages to sit up and scrub the exhaustion from his eyes just in time to join in on the last three numbers and then - the most important part of the whole thing, at least this year, at least now - lean over and tilt his head and kiss Patrick firmly, a little bit like a promise.

"Happy new year," Patrick whispers as the people on TV lose their fucking shit, their faces close enough together that their lips brush with every word, and Matt laughs breathlessly.

"Happy new year," he echoes, and the thing is - he's pretty sure it will be.


End file.
